The present invention relates to a lawn and garden spreader, and in particular to a lawn and garden spreader adapted to efficiently spread pelletized mulches, fertilizers, and other oversized applications.
Lawn and garden spreaders are used to spread and disperse a wide variety of lawn and garden applications. The spreaders typically include a hopper, an aperture located in the bottom of the hopper, a gate for opening and closing the aperture, a disbursement blade for spreading the application, and a mechanism for opening and closing the gate.
Heretofore, lawn and garden spreaders have normally incorporated a single gate to open and close the aperture. Typically, these spreaders allow the operator to adjust the gate between the fully open and fully closed positions only. As a result, the size of the apertures are calibrated so as to allow the operator to spread only a single type of application with any given spreader. Other systems, allow the operator to adjust the gate between a plurality of positions thereby allowing the operator to adjust the size of the aperture for the given application. However, current spreaders are typically not designed to provide adequate flow and metering of new pellet fertilizers, mulches and other similar large applications. Many new pelletized mulches and fertilizers are much larger than those typically utilized in the industry for many years and measure from 1/4 of an inch up to and including 1 inch in any direction. With most spreaders, opening the gate to a position such that these oversized applications can sufficiently flow through the aperture results in an un-metered flow. At the other extreme, restricting the aperture to meter the flow results in clogging and intermittent flow of the application through the aperture.
Another problem associated with most lawn and garden spreaders adapted to spread various sized applications is that they are complicated to operate and require the operator to consult charts and graphs in order to determine what setting is appropriate for a given application. Still others provide no help at all requiring the operator to rely on trial and error in an attempt to configure the spreader appropriately for each application.